viewing RED 25fps with Kona 3

[Gary Adcock]

[Paul Belanger] “How can I display footage shot with RED 2048×1152 at 25fps with the Kona3 in FCP?
I’ve been sticking the footage in a 1920×1080 29.97 sequence to get it to play with the Kona but everything is then a green render in FCP and that is not great. “

That WOULD NOT be the way to do it.

use the 1080 25i setup. or create a new one.

you need to load ALL of the extra presets for the Kona card to get the RED specific setups.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php

[Paul Belanger]

None of my Kona RED set ups are for 25fps. They are all 23.98.
And my Kona 1080 25fps ProRes set ups don’t work. They just give me a still output.
I have tried making a custom preset but I haven’t had luck.
I’ll try to see if Kona has some other RED set up I haven’t installed yet.

[Erik Lindahl]

I haven’t tested native RED-file output through the Kona 3 with FCP 7 but I have experience with FCP 6.

1. I haven’t NOT be able to get full 25 fps output to work with native RED files in a ProRes timeline as adviced by AJA in FCP (correcting the values to 25 fps instead of their 23.98, so I’m breaking the system a bit)
2. Working with 2K ProRes files for Offline works fine but that’s a totally different cup of tea.
3. Working with again the native RED files in COLOR works but I haven’t gotten realtime playback there either.

The above is on a FCP 6 / MacOSX 10.5 system.

I had a talk to one of the AJA guys about this problem at IBC this year and his comment was “I’m using RED wrong” in the fact that people don’t expect 2K to be 25 fps, 2K is 24 or 23.98 fps. I’m stunned this is the case seeing PAL countries 25 fps would be far smoother in every aspect, but I might have missed something here.

His recommendation was to convert to ProRes and stick with that.

After this I have however at home been testing FCP 7 on Snow Leopard and well there’s a HUGE difference in regards of native RED performance there. Either FCP7, Snow Leopard or the newer RED-driver makes something spin, not sure what, but the difference is staggering.

1. Full 25 fps playback in FCP. Given this isn’t output through any Kona card, I don’t get this at the studio with or with out video output enabled.
2. Working with 2K ProRes ofc works as before.
3. Working in COLOR with Native RED files now feels like I’m working with ProRes media almost.

What I don’t think you’ll get is any of the Kona 3’s 2K special features in 25 fps. You can output a cropped 1920×1080 frame from the 2K plate, which most of the times is good enough, but you don’t get the crop / scale features I don’t think.

What also surprised me a bit is that Blackmagic does offer 2K support for 25 fps media, given I can’t say what they actually support in this regard. They haven’t been known for superb scalers in the past.

————————
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se